The Dead We Love
by mangaluva
Summary: ...are not so far away. At least, they're not while Professor Layton, Luke and Flora are visiting Kurain Village. Oneshot that I dashed off while being an angsty drunk.


"Umm… Miss Maya?" Luke asked, tugging her sleeve and shuffling his feet nervously as soon as she stopped to listen to her. It was the third day of the Professor, Luke and Flora's visit to Kurain village, and this was the earliest that Maya had seen the boy awake of his own initiative. "You can… channel the dead, right?" the younger teenager asked, tugging at the peak of his old-fashioned blue cap. "So living people can talk to dead people?"

"Yep!" Maya said brightly, clasping her hands in front of her. "So long as I know their name and face, I can call to them, and if they're willing to visit the living world again… why, Luke? Is there somebody you want to speak to?"

Luke shook his head frantically. "No, but, ummm… Can I ask you a favour?" he said quickly, digging into his satchel and pulling out a photo. "First… please please _please_ don't tell the Professor I'm the one who asked this, and, uh… can you maybe channel this woman so he can speak to her? Please?" He nervously held out an old photograph. Maya took it, turning it around so that she could see it, and carefully studied the face of a pretty young woman with wavy brown hair and large, dark eyes set into a round, pale face. She had glasses slipping down her nose, and was smiling somewhat shyly at the camera.

"Sure," Maya promised, committing the woman's face to memory. "What's her name?"

"Claire," Luke said, almost whispering, eyes darting around as if he was frightened to be overheard. "Claire Folly. Please don't tell the Professor I asked! I just, um… I think it would be good if he could speak to her. Please."

"What is she, his girlfriend?" Maya giggled. She immediately regretted her teasing when Luke flinched, looking as if he was going to cry as he took the photo back, slipping it into his bag.

"She was," he said softly. "Thank you, Miss Maya."

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"The Channelling Room's down here," Phoenix said, leading the Professor down the polished wooden hallways of the Kurain Mansion. "I guess Maya's planning to challenge your scepticism about channelling. It really does have to be seen to be believed…"

"I have encountered many strange things in my lifetime, my boy," Professor Hershel Layton chuckled, "but there is invariably a rational explanation, I assure you…" He trailed off as Phoenix opened the door to the channelling room, making a sudden choking noise.

Phoenix was experienced enough with Maya's channelling abilities to know that it was she who was sitting in the channelling room; her clothes were the acolyte's robes that she'd been wearing earlier in the day, and her hair was black, in her traditional topknot hairstyle. She'd become somewhat curvier, however—not straining her clothes as much as channelling Mia did, but nevertheless noticeably fuller in figure—and her face had become rounder, the shape of her eyes and chin changing. Much larger eyes, a darker shade of brown, looked up from examining her clothes curiously to fix on the Professor's face.

"Hershel," the woman breathed.

"C… Claire?" the Professor gasped, taking an unusually ungainly step towards her, small eyes suddenly bugging. "Is… is it you…?"

Phoenix suddenly felt a great weight in the air, as if he'd stumbled into something terribly private, but he couldn't bring himself to move, instead watching as the air veritably crackled between the Professor and the woman that Maya was channelling. Then Claire dropped her gaze, running a hand through her fringe in an odd movement, as if she was trying to brush her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Hershel," she said with a self-conscious laugh, "but right now, all I can think of is how amazing it is to have empirical evidence that something of the self continues after death."

The Professor gave a strange laugh. It sounded much _younger_ than what Phoenix would have expected from the mature, wise older man. "Well… consider any scepticism I had over whether or not you are truly Claire Folly to be dispelled," he said hoarsely, taking another step forwards and then sinking to his knees in front of her, mirroring Maya's traditional seating pose that Claire had not evidently thought to move out of, reaching a shaking hand forwards. "Claire…"

Claire also reached out towards him, running a hand over the brim of his hat. "I can't believe you're still wearing this," she said fondly. "It must be an awfully hard hat to take care of… I got it for you as a little silliness, you know. A hat like this isn't for everyday wear…"

"I know," the Professor said, raising a hand to cover hers, "but I promised to be wearing it the next time we saw each other. I know we…" He swallowed hard. Phoenix took the quietest step backwards he could, but didn't think he could open the door to the channelling room in order to leave without making any noise, and he didn't dare interrupt whatever was going on between the Professor and Claire. Nevertheless, he almost felt as if he'd walked in on his parents having sex, so intimate was the connection between the Professor and this dead woman. "I missed you," the Professor said in a ragged voice. "Even now. I miss you…"

"I know," Claire whispered, tears welling up in her eyes as she clutched his hand. "I'm so sorry, Hershel. I'm sorry about the last time we saw each other, that I had to leave so soon… I had no choice. Believe me, I spent _months_ trying to figure out how to make my travel permanent, to remain in the time that I'd travelled to… but I knew, as soon as I heard that my corpse had been found in the machine's wreckage, that there was no way around my fate. I'm sorry I avoided you, Hershel, but I didn't want to… to say goodbye to you again…"

The Professor closed his eyes as her hand moved to rest on his cheek, caressing his face gently. "I know," he said softly. "If you couldn't figure it out… nobody could. I am… so sorry for my conduct, the last time we saw each other. I just had so much to say to you, and not enough _time…_ "

"We have time now," Claire said with a smile. "Time for me to ask you… what _were_ those big plans you were going to tell me about at dinner?"

The Professor let out a low chuckle. "You," he murmured. "After securing the job… I was intending to ask you to marry me. I carried that ring around for so long after you'd… well, it's still sitting in a drawer in my desk at home, I must admit. I never did find anybody that I wanted to give it to as much as I'd wanted to give it to you…" He opened his eyes, clutching her hand in both of hers. "I have to know, Claire. Would you…?"

"I would have said yes," Claire said, closing her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks. "Oh, Hershel, I'm so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you… I wanted that future with you so much. But you shouldn't have been alone because of me… Hershel, I'm _so_ sorry…"

"Don't be," the Professor said, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping her tears away. "I was never _alone_ , really. I still had our friends… and I've had Luke with me, and Flora… for a time, I was almost willing to let my life end without you. But even if it was not the life I dreamed of ever since I met you, I have had a life, Claire, I promise you. And all things considered, it hasn't been too bad, at that."

Claire chuckled, taking his handkerchief and rubbing at her eyes. "I'm glad," she said, smiling shakily. "Goodness knows the world is better off for you being in it, Hershel." She handed his handkerchief back, then leaned forwards, setting the Professor's hat aside, pressing her lips to his.

Phoenix looked aside. _I'm not about to cry,_ he told himself. _Okay, some of their conversation's been weird, but it's not too hard to figure out the history here and… I'm_ not _going to cry, dammit, I'm not, I'm_ not… _I_ really _don't feel like I should be here…_

"I love you, Claire," the Professor said after a long moment. "I always will."

"I love you too, Hershel," Claire replied softly. "And now we both know… I'm not truly gone. And I'm waiting for you. I'll always wait for you." She chuckled brokenly. "And I'd better be waiting a long time, Hershel Layton. I want you to live such a long, strange, wonderful life that you'll never run out of stories to tell me about it, not even in eternity. Promise?"

"Promise," the Professor replied. "Claire…"

Phoenix chanced a glance back and saw that the Professor's hat had been tipped back, almost off of his head, as he and Claire rested their foreheads against each other, eyes closed, clutching each other's hands. Then they opened their eyes and exchanged small, warm smiles. The Professor nodded slightly and Claire closed her eyes, before slumping abruptly.

When she opened her eyes and looked up, she was Maya again. "Oh… hey, Professor," she said blearily.

"Are you alright, Maya?" the Professor asked, moving one hand to straighten his hat and putting the other around Maya's shoulders to support her as she rubbed at her red, swollen eyes.

"Mm-hmm… wow, feels like I was crying a lot," Maya mumbled, looking from the Professor to Phoenix. "Did it work?"

"My scepticism is entirely gone, I assure you," the Professor assured her, smiling warmly even though his own eyes were red-rimmed. "Thank you, Maya."

"It's what I do!" Maya said brightly, stretching as she stood up. "Man, a good channelling always leaves me hungry. Nick, did you know there's a new place down in the village that does burgers? We should go get some!"

 _My treat, I'm guessing…_ Phoenix thought, stifling a groan as he mentally pictured his bank balance transforming into a pile of burgers. The Professor looked up sharply, as if he'd forgotten that Phoenix was there— _maybe he did,_ Phoenix thought nervously. _I really_ shouldn't _have been watching this…_ -but then smiled, tipping his hat.

"I shall go fetch Luke and Flora," he said, standing up and patting off the knees of his trousers. "I'm afraid that both of them are running from growth spurt to growth spurt and do not appear to have an upper limit to how much they can eat…" Phoenix actually groaned aloud at the thought of having to pay for both Maya's dinner and two English teenagers who, judging from who their guardian was, probably didn't eat enough fast food to be sick to the back teeth of it.

"You can't wangle us a Kurain Master's Discount, can you?" Phoenix plaintively asked Maya, who just trotted past him with a broad grin, heading for the bathroom to wash out her reddened eyes.

"One last question, if you don't mind, Maya," the Professor added as he followed her and Maya out of the room. "You don't happen to still have the photograph that Luke stole from me, do you?"

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 _I came home from a birthday party too drunk to sleep and instead sat up on my laptop watching Professor Layton AMVs. This was a mistake because I am a morose drunk who thinks about sad stuff when she's too pissed to stop herself. However, sober friends told me that I am an awful person and I should definitely share this, so here we are._

 _I love both Professor Layton and Ace Attorney a lot and sadly don't own either._


End file.
